[NYer]

Father Parisi is pastor of St. Jude Parish in Overland, MO.

[NYer]

Oh boy, could we produce a list!

[big'ol_freeper]

Do I dare say that I like the term heretic better than saying "our separated brothers and sisters". I don't say that to be mean but simply to show the significance of their error.

[Kolokotronis]

"...a person who rejects the supreme authority of the Holy Father over the universal Church is materially a schismatic. Only the person who knowingly and willfully refuses to submit to papal authority or of joining in communion with the Catholic Church subject to him is to be considered a formal schismatic."

That would be me and most of my ping list! :)

[AgThorn]

It simply is not appropriate to attribute moral culpability to those who belong to materially heretical or schismatic churches.

Since this was a single paragraph after a discussion on protestants, are all of us God fearing, bible beleaving, Jesus following Christians who are NOT Catholic to surmise that the Roman Catholic church views us all as members of heretical churchs? i.e. is this sentence inclusive of ALL protestants? i.e. non-Roman catholic, non-Orthodox Christians?

[vox_freedom]

From article: Schism is the refusal to submit to the authority of the pope or to join in communion with the members of the Catholic Church subject to him.

Like St. Athanasius?

St. Athanasius
Fighter of heresy, falsely accused, ridiculed, condemned, removed from office by heretics and church hierarchy, banished for over ten years, returned, expelled for a second time, continued to fight for the Faith, the entire world against him, "no friends but God and Death...," died, and ultimately declared a Saint.

[Rytwyng]

...there is no appropriate category in Catholic thought for the phenomenon of Protestantism today (one could say the same of the relationship to the separated churches of the East). It is obvious that the old category of ‘heresy’ is no longer of any value. Heresy, for Scripture and the early Church, includes the idea of a personal decision against the unity of the Church, and heresy’s characteristic is pertinacia, the obstinacy of him who persists in his own private way. This, however, cannot be regarded as an appropriate description of the spiritual situation of the Protestant Christian. In the course of a now centuries-old history, Protestantism has made an important contribution to the realization of Christian faith, fulfilling a positive function in the development of the Christian message and, above all, often giving rise to a sincere and profound faith in the individual non-Catholic Christian, whose separation from the Catholic affirmation has nothing to do with the pertinacia characteristic of heresy. Perhaps we may here invert a saying of St. Augustine’s: that an old schism becomes a heresy. The very passage of time alters the character of a division, so that an old division is something essentially different from a new one. Something that was once rightly condemned as heresy cannot later simply become true, but it can gradually develop its own positive ecclesial nature, with which the individual is presented as his church and in which he lives as a believer, not as a heretic. This organization of one group, however, ultimately has an effect on the whole. The conclusion is inescapable, then: Protestantism today is something different from heresy in the traditional sense, a phenomenon whose true theological place has not yet been determined.”

-- Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, "The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood" (Ignatius Press)

The supreme irony of all this, is that by validating the good that Protestantism has done, he makes the Tiber seem a bit warmer.

[Alex Murphy]

Heresy is the obstinate denial by someone baptized of a truth which is to be believed with divine and "catholic" faith, or it may be an obstinate doubt about such a truth.

Apostasy is the total repudiation of the Christian faith.

Schism is the refusal to submit to the authority of the pope or to join in communion with the members of the Catholic Church subject to him.

NYer, would you say this is a faily authoritative definition of these terms (from the Catholic view)? I ask because, among some Protestants, I hear the terms thrown around w/o much of a solid definition behind them.

[TexConfederate1861]

Being a "schismatic" depends on who is doing the name calling. From the Orthodox point of view, it is the Latin Church who is in "schism".....but you guys seem to be coming around. :) (as my Orthodox Brother stated earlier)

[AnimalLover]

PING

[countorlock]

What a terrible thread this is going to be.

[JimKalb]

It sounds like Fr. Parisi is saying:

1. A man is a formal heretic who willingly professes what he knows to be false.
2. A man is a formal schismatic who knowingly and willfully refuses to submit to papal authority or to join in communion with the Catholic Church subject to him, presumably knowing who the pope and Church are and what their authority amounts to. (Without the proviso all Orthodox and Protestants would be formal schismatics, and Fr. Parisi doesn't want to say that.)
3. A man is a formal apostate if he willfully and knowingly repudiated Christ Himself or the Church, again presumably knowing who Christ is and what the Church is.

On these definitions, how many formal heretics, schismatics or apostates could there ever be? And wouldn't most of them be insane, which would remove culpability?